Hey guys, Looking for a bit of advice. I'm currently operating a PB100 in an indoor snowdome for about 2 years/4 seasons and wanted to make the jump to doing the real thing on an actual mountain. The problem is I'm not sure about how to get a start. Working already with the machines I thought I would have an advantage however after trying to get a job this season in Europe proved quite unsuccessful I realised this might not be the case. I have decided to cast my net further afford to Canada, America or possibly New Zeland next season.

Whilst I have only operated indoors I have built some good skills such as working with snow the consistency of soup, building 12+ features for park lines every week with said soup snow. Working in some pretty tight spaces and on a very thin base layer, under which are coolant pipes. Also picked up a lot about maintaing the machines since the drivers do all the maintence work.

My problem is I'm not sure how to go about applying. In Europe these jobs aren't advertised, it's more who you know and even if they are if you contact the lift company they haven't a clue and just ignore you to simplify matters. I even tried offering to work for free just to gain experience and training and their response was like I was trying to steal their secrets. So the long and short of it is I'm looking for advice on applying to places, my next idea was making a video edit of my indoor driving. It's kind of like skiers trying to get sponsored hah.

New Zealand places either are or will be soon recruiting people for the summer (or their winter).... if going over there is something you want to do, you should get an application in as soon as you can once their recruitment process starts. If you're going to do it, make sure you have some cash set aside because getting over there and actually surviving can be quite expensive.

For the US, late summer/early fall is usually when jobs start to get posted. I would suggest trying the larger mountains, at least at first because bigger departments=more jobs and more jobs=a higher chance of getting in. Once you get experience you can pick and choose more. You've already kind of got the hang of it with the small cats, it is different on ski trails because the cats are bigger and the technique to bring a trail back is different, but it's not that hard to figure out.

Thanks for the response, yea I put in an application to NZ but they seem to want a T licence so I guess I will find out how flexible they are for that if they get back to me. Canada is my next stop for the 16/17 season. Strangely I never considered America, don't really know why but I never thought about working there till now. I guess its no harder than anywhere else to get a working visa? But its back to the snowdome this summer to keep my hours up playing in the soup with my little 100.